Rich joined in 2006 and invests in early and growth-stage companies in AI, SaaS, and enterprise. Prior to Accel, he was an operator at Openwave Systems (mobile pioneer) and Covad Communications, and began his career at Procter & Gamble and McKinsey. He is from Santa Rosa, California, and graduated from MIT. He also served on the National Venture Capital Association Board of Directors.
Get to know Rich
What’s the most impactful piece of advice you’ve received?
Always try to see the human, the actual person with their hopes and fears, not just the idea or the business itself. When starting out my career, I thought that most questions and problems had a singular "right answer" and primarily solved through quantitative means. This was from my first boss, Tamara at the very start of my career, a great intuitive leader herself. It was excellent advice to learn how to blend both IQ and EQ perspectives, and has stuck with me ever since.
What was your first job?
As a high school student, I finagled a summer job at Hewlett-Packard in Santa Rosa, where I spent a summer in the stock room pulling electronic parts for manufacturing 'spectrum analyzers'. It was an "on your feet" all day pushing a roller cart around the factory floor, but it was an awesome first job. At the time, HP really invested in programs to support high school and college summer students, and I'll always be appreciative of that opportunity and experience.
Who most inspires you?
Short answer: my parents who immigrated to the US in the 1959.
Long answer: anyone who took the risk to immigrate to give their kids a better chance.
It's hard to imagine getting on a boat, leaving your family behind and crossing an ocean to a country where you only partially speak the language. It's 1959: no texting, no FaceTime, no email, expensive phone calls seldomly, so essentially no real contact with your family for years. They did what was required, including odd jobs picking fruit in orchards and washing dishes in restaurants to make ends meet. My brother and I were the beneficiaries of that risk-taking, and were able to grow up here in California as the technology renaissance kicked off in the 1980s, and a big part of why I'm fortunate enough to work in the technology industry today.
